CI Can't Keep Up With AI | Blacksmith CEO & Co-Founder Aditya Jayaprakash

AI coding agents are writing software faster than ever. But what happens when the systems responsible for testing and validating that code can't keep up?

In this episode of Uplink, Michael Reid sits down with Aditya "JP" Jayaprakash, Co-founder & CEO of Blacksmith, to explore why continuous integration (CI) has become one of the biggest bottlenecks in modern software development.

As AI-generated pull requests increase, software teams are finding themselves waiting on builds, tests, and validation pipelines that weren't designed for this level of scale. JP explains how Blacksmith is rethinking GitHub Actions infrastructure with purpose-built systems designed for speed, instant scaling, and developer productivity.

This episode covers:
⚫️ Why AI coding agents are exposing CI as the next major bottleneck.
⚫️ What continuous integration actually does behind the scenes.
⚫️ How GitHub Actions workflows scale—and where they break down.
⚫️ Why purpose-built infrastructure can outperform generic cloud approaches for CI workloads.
⚫️ The role of micro VMs, caching, and build acceleration.
⚫️ How automated testing acts as a guardrail for AI-generated code.
⚫️ The future of autonomous software development and always-on coding agents.

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Chapters:

00:02 Welcome And Blacksmith Overview

02:28 Why CI Feels So Slow

05:12 AI Agents Make CI Explode

07:42 GitHub App MicroVMs And Cache

10:22 Why Hyperscalers Struggle With CI

13:23 Shipping Faster While Keeping Quality

17:19 Ideal Customers And Word Of Mouth

22:10 Planning Hardware For Hypergrowth

30:10 Always-On Agents And The Next Phase